“Iron Man” is the best super-hero movie since “Spider-Man 2,” which places it among the top five or six ever made. It’s terrific in some of the ways almost all super-hero movies, good or mediocre, have been: it’s full of action and special effects, and the effects are sensational. But it also has strengths in areas where all too many comic book-based movies have been weak: the characters are interesting, the hero in particular, the acting is well above average, and the story has a lot of heart. Plus, it’s enough fun to keep you glued into your seat, your eyes wide, your ears tuned to pick up the often-sharp dialogue. Hot damn.

Robert Downey, Jr., has famously been through a lot of self-induced hell over the past decade and a half—major drug problems, a flippant, uncaring attitude toward his own life and career, which initially had been promising enough that he got an Oscar nomination as best actor for a role that couldn’t possibly have been easy to do: the title role in “Chaplin.” And he deserved the nomination, too.

Someone pointed out that this summer’s super-hero movies have casts that sound more like the actors in a group of independent movies: Downey, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jeff Bridges, Terrence Howard, Christian Bale, Michael Caine, etc. This can only be a good thing. The stars of super-hero movies are the characters themselves; placing major stars in roles of this nature is almost always going to be a mistake. Robert Redford was allegedly offered the title role in Richard Donner’s “Superman,” but declined. He said he’d love to play the part, but the minute he flew out a window, the audience wouldn’t think “there goes Superman,” they’d think “there goes Robert Redford, flying out a window.” Producers of super-hero movies have caught on: they cast the best actors for the roles rather than the biggest stars who might fit.

There’s a lot to be gained by having an exceptional actor don your hero’s duds, spandex or a gold-titanium alloy shell, as here. The actor spends more time OUT of the superhero suit than IN it, so he (or she) had damned well better be able to carry the dialogue scenes. And Robert Downey Jr. is well up to the task. His striking eyes, soulful at times, dissipated at others, always intelligent and knowing, aren’t even visible when he wears his Iron Man super-suit, but we know they’re in there (and we do occasionally get shots of his face inside the helmet). He’s learned to convey a great deal through posture, gesture, delivery of lines and the subtle movements of his expressive face. This may well be the best performance as a super-hero in movie history.

Iron Man isn’t as well-known as Batman, Spider-Man or (God knows)
Superman, so director Jon Favreau chooses to introduce him carefully.
When the movie opens, squillionaire inventor Tony Stark (Downey) is
cruising along in Afghanistan in a Humvee, sipping a cocktail and
making wisecracks. He’s being escorted by a group of Marines. Then
there’s an explosion, and the fleeing Tony collapses onto the desert.

The movie flashes back a few days. We’re given a “Citizen Kane”-like
news-shown history of Tony Stark. Not only was his late father a great
inventor and business magnate himself, but Tony was a childhood genius,
a whiz at mathematics and engineering. He’s also a playboy, and his
face appears on magazines and newspapers. His father has died; he’s now
running Stark Enterprises with his father’s long-time partner Obadiah
Stane (Jeff Bridges); mostly, they make high-tech weaponry. Tony
flippantly ignores a major awards ceremony in Las Vegas, presided over
by his Marine officer buddy Jim Rhodes (Terrence Howard); the award is
accepted by an embarrassed Stane. Tony is off in a casino, surrounded
by sexy chicks, losing big at craps and not giving a damn. He goes to
Afghanistan to personally demonstrate Stark Enterprises’ new Jericho
missile, which makes use of Stark’s new repulsor technology. Then
there’s the trip, then there’s the kaboom.

Back in the present in Afghanistan, Tony wakes up in a cave, fastened
to a car battery. He’s being helped by wry Yinsen (Shaun Taub), a
fellow prisoner, an Iraqi with a family in a small town elsewhere. He’s
also a prisoner of an insurgent group headed by Raza (Faran Tahir).
This guy has really grandiose plans, likening himself to Genghis Khan.
He wants Stark to build him his own Jericho missile. But Tony has seen
that the equipment made by his company hasn’t been saving the world,
which he vaguely believed, but is oppressing it. He’s his own victim.

He’s hooked to that battery to keep an electro-magnet on his chest—part
of his chest, actually—working: it keeps the shrapnel from his own
weapons away from his heart. Tony quickly realizes Yinsen is brilliant
and eager to overthrow their captors, so they work together on a
project, which they have to keep secret even from the video monitors.

All this is preamble, actually; the movie, already fast-paced, kicks
into high gear when Tony dons what they’ve been building: an armored,
weaponry-bristling, powered metal suit. And he does make his getaway,
picked up by Rhodes—Rhodey—in a Stark helicopter.

Back in America, Tony is a new man. He’s haunted by what he’s seen,
deeply ashamed of Stark Enteprises’ part in increasing the ability of
tyrants and conquerors to oppress ordinary people. To Stane’s surprise,
he immediately announces that Stark Enterprises is abandoning their
armament wing. He holes up in his incredibly Malibu mansion, working
hard down in his elaborate garage/shop, trying to create something he
keeps secret from Stane and even his long-time, dedicated assistant
“Pepper” Potts (Gwyneth Paltrow).

What he’s creating, of course, is a super-refined version of that
armored suit. He’s making it possible for him to become Iron Man.

Even though Tony Stark is melancholy and lonely, Downey’s wit and
personality keep him from becoming a drag on the story. Quite the
contrary—he drives the story forward. He doesn’t drink as much (in the
comics, there was a famous, ground-breaking series of stories in which
Stark finally realized he was an alcoholic), he rarely goes out. He
concentrates on that suit, assisted by a couple of clever industrial
robots. Pepper, who’s clearly more than halfway in love with him (but
doesn’t let him know), trusts him enough to help keep what he’s doing a
secret even from Obadiah Stane and Rhodey.

The screen credits not just Marvel’s Stan Lee (who has his traditional
Marvel-movie cameo), but Jack Kirby, Don Heck and Larry Lieber, all of
whom were instrumental in establishing Iron Man as a Marvel comics
character. The screenplay here is by two writing teams, Mark Fergus
& Hawk Ostby (who co-wrote “Children of Men”) and Art Marcum &
Matt Holloway. The story has the usual first-movie problems for a
superhero—the origin has to be spelled out—and a somewhat weak ending,
with Stark in full Iron Man gear, battling an opponent wearing an even
bigger and more powerful similar outfit, in the skies and on the ground
near Santa Monica.

But there are also several terrific sequences—Tony’s escape in
Afghanistan, his first flight in his Mark II Iron Man suit (this one
looks like polished chrome) and a battle between Tony in the
red-and-yellow Mark III suit and some American fighter jets. This is
made more difficulty because Tony has to work hard not to harm the
pilots.

And there’s a lot of humor. In the first place, Stark is a wisenheimer
as well as brilliant; it’s hard for him to say three lines without a
muttered wisecrack. But there are also creative gags—as Iron Man
rockets through the skies like a human guided missile, he gets a
telephone call. Wouldn’t you know it, just when you’re really busy, the
damned phone rings.... And many, comic fans especially, are going to be
very surprised by the last line of the movie.

Even at two hours plus, “Iron Man” is tightly focused and lean—we see
only what we need to see, then on to the next sequence. Yet even so,
there’s time for crisp, clean exposition and characterization. Everyone
who opens his or her mouth has a vivid character, from Tony’s
eager-beaver chauffeur (director Favreau himself), to the insurgent
burly, jolly and brutal second-in-command (Abu Bakaar), to a sexy
reporter (Leslie Bibb, busy these days), to a helpful but maybe
sinister government agent (Clark Gregg). This bit is especially clever:
even if you don’t recognize the name Clark Gregg, you’ll recognize the
actor; he’s forever playing sinister, duplicitous government agents or
businessmen—and seems to be doing much the same here. That’s SEEMS to,
mind you…

Gwyneth Paltrow is as unusual a choice for Pepper Potts as Downey is
for Tony/Iron Man, but she works just about as well as he does, which
is plenty. She’s sharp, but not in a gotta-top-him Lois Lane manner;
she’s sexy but that’s obviously not why Tony keeps her around (his
bedroom activities, some of which we see, clearly don’t include her).
She’s smart, she’s efficient, and she’s not afraid to confront the
arrogant Stark. Also, she looks like she’s having a terrific time in a
kind of movie she probably never expected to appear in.

Jeff Bridges is a surprising but worthy choice as the stern, carefully
avuncular Obadiah Stane (and he has the best name in the movie). He
shaved his head and grew a beard, which makes him look something like a
biker in an expensive suit, but it’s the right look for the role.
Terrence Howard doesn’t have much to do here, but since in the comics,
Rhodey eventually adopted a super-suit himself, maybe there’s something
for him in one of the sequels.

People scratched their heads and shrugged when Robert Downey, Jr. was
cast as Iron Man. But despite his problems with addiction and the
law—he served a year in prison—he never really lost the affection of
Hollywood, he never completely dropped off the screen. Almost everyone
knew who he was, almost everyone thought of him as a victim working
hard to regain his footing. He brings a lot of that baggage into his
role as Tony Stark—and it all works FOR him. But what works the best on
his behalf is his clear understanding of the character of Tony Stark,
that when we first meet the arrogant, self-assured, overly cool and hip
playboy, he’s a man nearing the end of his tether, a man in great need
of redemption. It’s to Downey’s enormous credit that he makes Stark so
basically likeable that we WANT to see him undergo this redemption.
It’s to the credit of Favreau and his screenwriters that his journey to
redemption is so damned much fun.

[Written by AVRev] [START]
The video transfer of this film is a bit of an enigma. At first glance
it may appear to be a horrible transfer, never worthy of being demo
material. However, once you realize that the image was intentionally
made with that appearance, you might think differently. As with most
military sequences, the Afghanistan sequences have a grainy and
realistic picture balance. The colors are sometimes oversaturated to
compensate for the lack of colors in the actual production. The blacks
are weak, yielding a lack of depth in the image. Many of the cave
sequences are extremely dark, with barely the faces of the actors
visible. Just remember, this is all intentional. Once the film
returns to the city of Los Angeles / Malibu, the colors are restored to
their expected vibrancy. The first night flight of Iron Man is
especially worthy of demo material. The subsequent daytime sequence
between two fighter jets and Iron Man is also extremely powerful.
There is a fair amount of grain in the image, preserving the look of
the 35mm film. There is no problem with edge enhancement or
compression artifacts. While not the absolute best in picture quality,
given its brand new release status, "Iron Man" does give you some
striking images.

The audio is presented in Dolby TrueHD 5.1. The track is terrific. It
nears perfection. The surrounds are used prominently, as expected in
such an action flick. Discrete effect placement is outstanding.
However, ambiences sometimes lack in the surround channels. The
dialogue is clear, but dips a little low at points. In fact, the
entire soundtrack is presented about seven decibels too low. The LFE
channel is solid, reaching a extremely low, without the added muddiness
to the audio. There are certain points of the film that I wish the LFE
channel was increased in volume. My biggest grip with the film's audio
would have to the lack of clarity overall. The entire mix is very
mid-low range frequencies. This problem takes you out of the film, as
without proper high frequencies the audio sounds more like is
originates from the screen rather than surround you. With a little EQ
adjustment, this issue can be solved. However, that solution is not
ideal for most consumers.

"Iron Man" is presented in a two-disc collection. The first disc
contains the feature film as well as some of the special features. In
terms of bonus features, the first disc contains the awesome
deleted/extended scenes. For the first time in a while, the deleted
scenes actually have real value to them. Also present on disc one is a
50-minute documentary on the creation of the Iron Man comic book
character called, "The Invincible Iron Man." The BD-Live anf Blu-ray
Exclusive features are also presented on disc one. These include the
"Hall of Armor" and "Iron Man I.O."

Disc two contains the rest of the bonus features. First is, "I Am Iron
Man," a 7-part documentary on the making of the film. Next is "Wired:
the Visual Effects of Iron Man." The final special features are Screen
Tests, Still Galleries, and Theatrical Trailers.
[END]

Jon Favreau has worked mostly as an actor (he was Foggy in “Daredevil”)
and writer (co-wrote “Swingers”), but did direct both “Elf” and
“Zathura.” Who’d have thought he’d be so much the right choice to head
“Iron Man”? Not I, that’s who. But he’s done a great job. Even though
it’s not exactly short and has a great deal of terrain to cover before
Stark even puts on the red-and-gold suit, the movie zips along, borne
more by the characters and their interactions than by the plot. It’s
serious enough when it needs to be, light and almost frothy at other
times. It’s always clever, always engaging, and you always want to see
what happens next. ESPECIALLY after that very last line.

But Downey, Paltrow and Howard, at least, have already signed for two more “Iron Man” movies. Something to look forward to.